


Stay In

by Omnicat



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: (maybe), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, CNTUAW stands for Leaning Hard Into The Canonical Fridged Family Backstory, F/M, Ficlet, Gen, Grief/Loss/Mourning, Sao Paulo, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:20:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24530689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Omnicat/pseuds/Omnicat
Summary: “Don’t get up, I’m just going to check on Iris. I think I heard her coughing.”Why did he get up? Why didn’t he just do as she said?
Relationships: Flynn & Iris, Lorena/Flynn, Lucy & Flynn
Comments: 8
Kudos: 21





	Stay In

Sometimes he fantasizes he didn’t get out of bed that night.

Scratch that, he thinks long and hard and with a heartsick hunger of not getting out of bed that night every time he closes his eyes and many times they’re open. He thinks of just... not noticing. Of _not_ having that deeply ingrained instinct that tells him the ‘coughs’ aren’t his daughter’s, but a silencer’s. Of turning around, pulling the covers closer around himself, and getting comfortable again, secure in the false knowledge that Iris was fine all day and Lorena will be back in a minute, having confirmed she’s still fine now.

He fantasizes about letting those bastards – Rittenhouse, the money he flagged, it has to be – shoot him in the back of the head as he dozes, and it feels worth it.

He doesn’t believe in an afterlife. Not really. He’s been watching people die of violence and heartbreak and everything else under the sun since he was sixteen years old and he only ever entertains the idea of life after death when... when it’s like _this_. That’s not believing, that’s just pain. And fuck, he doesn’t even care.

What does it matter if death is the end or a gateway to something new, like Lorena believes? (Believ _ed_.) One way or another, if he’d just let them kill him, he wouldn’t be here now, alive without his wife and daughter. It’s not like he thinks his life was worthless or meaningless before he met Lorena. He fought for causes and nations but most of all for people, and while it may have been a hard life, it more often than not was a good one. But since he met her, since they had Iris, his life had been _happy_. Blissfully, deliriously full of joy and love. And now the good, the bad, the ugliness and the beauty, all of it is gone.

Every day, he wakes up, gets out of bed, and goes on running. He doesn’t stop to think about why. There’s no purpose to it, just instinct and an unbearable, helpless fury making it impossible to stop or rest. He keeps moving, the rage keeps burning, the pain keeps hurting, and his only solaces are alcohol and fantasies of joining his girls in death.

A woman finds him in Brazil, a few weeks later. _Rittenhouse_ , traveling in the very time machine his Lorena and Iris were murdered for. There’s a locket around her neck, terrible scars on her hands, and a look in her eyes as if she knows him better than he knows himself anymore.

She tells him she knows everything, and proves it. She gives him a journal and tells him that she knows what he’s thinking too, but he needs to read this book before he decides whether or not to lie down on his grimy hotel bed and put the barrel to his head himself. He’d almost reached the bottom of his bottle before she walked in. She snatches the bottle from his hand before he can make it all the way there and wedges herself under his arm until suddenly, he’s horizontal. Turning around. Pulling the covers closer around himself. Getting comfortable.

In the morning, the woman is gone but her book is not, so he can’t have drunkenly hallucinated _all_ of it. He stays in, nurses his hangover, reads, feels his mind race as if it isn’t his own, and sleeps some more. The next time he gets out of bed, he’s not running anymore.

He _is_ going to see Lorena and Iris again. Alive.

**Author's Note:**

> (What timeline this is? Hell if I know, but it’s not one of those where he really _does_ end up killing himself, I can tell you that. >:'( )


End file.
